Friday, 18 March 2011

More spring pictures

I have just bought myself a new camera and of course I have been learning how to drive it. It has more menus than a four star restaurant and there are at least one hundred more functions than I will ever need but I have found out how to take pictures with it, the reason I actually bought it, so I have been snapping everything in sight.

The spring flowers have been coming out hourly over the last few days so they are the natural candidates for photos and here are some.

A pair of ring necked doves enjoying the spring weather

The sky has been blue and not a cloud in view with a pale moon high in the sky

Encouraged by the previous day's sunshine I persuaded TBH (The Better Half) to come to Birdlip which overlooks Gloucester, in order to snap some long shots of the view we get from there. Normally you can see the river Severn and Wales in the distance, but instead of brilliant sunshine it was hazy and indistinct, and this was the best shot, just the boring old A417 dual carriageway leading to Gloucester. For anyone from the USA viewing this page, Gloucester is pronounced Gloster - don't ask me why it is spelled like that, after all the most famous river in England is spelled Thames and pronounced temms not they-mes as you would expect. Still that is nothing compared to Featherstonhaugh and Cholmondeley. Can anyone, who does not already know, guess how how these names are pronounced?

5 comments:

I knew you must be further south than me because my willow isn't anywhere near that stage. (Mind you, I pruned it a couple of weeks ago because it didn't look like it was doing much and I never got round to it last year so it was very top heavy. The shock has probably set it back a bit.)

Thanks for your Hastings books suggestions. I shall be onto Amazon this morning to order something. Possibly Frogs Under the Wheels, because that sounds intriguing. and maybe a Mapp and Lucia since that was recommended by someone else. Happy snapping!

Beautiful photos, Rabbit! When I come to visit you must help me make sense of the zillions of settings on my new camera, also. So far the 'landscape' setting seems to work the best for every kind of photo opportunity, so obviously something is wrong!

I am sure my camera is not as advanced as yours, but a friend has just asked if I would be willing to be the official photographer at her wedding because she likes my photos - so I guess my photos are not so bad!

I don't know about the first town, but I seem to recall a place called 'Chumley' and wonder if that's the one?

Your spring has come much earlier than ours, although the temps are rising and the snow has all but disappeared. But we have had snow at the end of April, so who knows!

MA-J no problem about the books, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist is quite well known and often used in English lit classes. Have a good hol. Spot on Kaybee, it sounds like chumley. The first one is much harder and sounds like fanshaw. Your pictures are always OK, so no wonder you have been asked to take your friend's wedding.Thanks Elizabeth, it is a Sony A55. I had originally intended to buy my old one a new lens but I got a better deal on the new camera, which fits many of my existing lenses. It was a step up and came with its own 16-55mm lens. Not all the pictures were taken with that lens. The Moon needed a 500mm lens, which I had already. Excuse the geek speak but some of your posts suggest you use a DSLR camera yourself.

Excellent choice. I was asking because as you know my Canon got jarred back in November and is not responding well very well at all, so I'm thinking about changing it. Several people have recommended a move to Sony and I had a try out of a friend's for a weekend and was very imprssed. But I don't really want to change all my lenses... x

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Happily married, retired. The name SNAFU was accidental, I got cross with Blogger because my name is so commonplace any variation I could think of was already in use. Computer systems do not do sarcasm and so it accepted my comment as my user name. I am not hiding my identity, my name is Pete Morris. Lifelong geek and technophile. Bookshelves in nearly every room of the house, from Blyton to Einstein. Spent most of my working life training adults in geeky stuff, from basic electrics to computer systems. My heroes are, amongst others, Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson and Eric Laithwaite and if you don’t need to look them up in Wikipedia then you are my kind of geek. .